Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Shrunk spaces, ruined some angling... Man, John's right, spaces are very easy to shrink. I will try to be more conscientious about this as I continue these studies.

The next half of this post, I need to emphasize thatI DID NOT DRAW THE FOLLOWING IMAGES! I am just practicing inking with a brush! Basically tracing!

I am only uploading these so I can keep track of my progress.

So I've always had sort of a weakness for inking. I mean real, physical inking. I can do digital stuff just fine because I feel pretty good about understanding the rules for it, but I have somewhat of a shakey hand. When I draw I kind of press hard, so using a brush sort runs counter to what I'm comfortable with.

But real, brush-and-pen ink has always been so beautiful and special and organic to me. And I want to get good at handling real, more delicate mediums. I figure, well, why not now, and why not just use rote practice until I feel confident? It's almost 100% technical skill that I have trouble with, so just inking really good drawings should be a step in the right direction. I've done probably about 20 of these print-out studies in the last couple of days and I'm finally seeing some very meager beginnings of getting comfortable with the stuff. I'm just using a brush pen for now, for training wheels.

As a note, isn't this Ed Benedict drawing of Ricochet one of the most beautiful drawings you've ever seen??

I'm sorry, Mr. Benedict, for sullying such a nice drawing. I'm still so shakey. The hands don't describe their forms at all, and the feet are also very jittery. Lots of mistakes, but almost all of them are out of complete inexperience with this stuff.

Another beautiful Benedict drawing

Me trying to ink again. I screwed up the tail pretty badly. This is really hard, but I think it'll be worth it once I get better.

I think I may have done Snagglepuss before Ricochet, if it matters. Anyway, so, this is the first time I've ink-practiced that I haven't been TOTALLY humiliated to show (I started intentionally practicing yesterday). Hopefully there will be more, and there will be visible improvement as I get more familiar with using a brush to make lines.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

I thought I'd confess publicly that the reality of graduating college this May is slowly creeping up on me, and I'm a little concerned. I figure it'd be a good idea to move out to southern California if I expect to get a job making cartoons (in any form), but southern California is too expensive to just scoot on over and hope for the best. However, if I wait more than 6 months to move out, I will have to move out while paying for student loans.

...Does anyone know about how, exactly, to go about this? Really I just want a job that will pay my bills, give me some sort of experience with a studio, and allow me to learn and grow as a cartoonist. Unfortunately, I can't really see that happening with anyone but John (perhaps I've become a purist already). So, basically, I guess I'd be trying to pay my bills, get experience, and going home and studying (similar to how I'm doing now, only I'm taking classes and working as a barista instead of just having a real job).

Anyway, I'm free from school in May, free from my lease in August (I'd be ok breaking it if there was some extremely grand opportunity). I have to start paying off my loans in November.

I suppose I should be building a portfolio, but that cuts into my cartoon studies. Maybe I could spend some time after graduating building a portfolio? Would any place care about my studies? Ach.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that even if I had a portfolio prepared, I don't know of any cartoon studios that are making anything I actually like!

I guess I'm just posting out loud, but I thought I'd ask if anyone had any sort of advice on getting my career started.

I think it's some sort of law of the universe that one hand always has to present a problem... haha. Anyway, I wanted to try for something a little looser, with more emphasis on asymmetry.So I made a different sort of error: the head's lopsided. REALLY lopsided. I wanted it to be asymmetrical, not melting. If I were to do this over again, I'd pull in the viewer's right side of the face, wrapping it much more tightly into perspective (the ear would go with it). I'd also try to make it clearer that the hand on the right is supposed to be coming forward in space (you'd be able to see in the sleeve more, etc).

Also, I think I'd round out the right foot on the bottom, more. It needs to be more volumous.

These are coming out a lot more easily and I'm really happy with that. As you might have noticed, I'm sort of trying to use different elements from both the Little Whirlwind Mickey and the Mickey Mouse Club opening Mickeys. Been having a lot of fun and it's exciting to think of these as a little more of my own than the straight-up referenced studies (I feel less silly showing them to people who ask at school).

Sunday, September 6, 2009

However, the arms really don't make a lot of sense and the eyes are up too high on his skull. I don't think there's enough sense of weight on his foot to the right, even if he is tiptoeing. Also, the sock cloth on the end of the toe to the left doesn't look like it's totally logical. It should be pointed more downward, at an angle.

I got the idea to draw this from Jory. Both he and I love the old cartoon trope of bedtime getup, cap and candle included. He draws it on top of a lot of my doodles when we have a class together, so of course he put one of the bazillion Mickeys I've drawn this past week. So, I decided to draw one, myself.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

I didn't have the model sheet for reference in the finish, and it shows in where it's less confident (I'm looking at you, pants). You can see where I changed some stuff in the red; before the arm felt too long and sort of awkward, so I brought it in, but the hand wasn't as good. I just gotta keep reminding myself this is a learning process...

This is a Study Blog

This blog is devoted to STUDIES of the traditional cartoon. Most ideas on here are not mine (characters, poses, etc.)-- this is a blog about learning new things about classic cartooning. While I am proud of my work posted here, I can't take credit for the ideas.

I owe a lot to my mentor, John K. He is a great teacher, and many of these studies also use his drawings as a starting point.